Cityfibre’s civil engineering teams appear to have begun their deployment of a new 1Gbps capable Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) based broadband ISP network in the East Midlands city of Leicester (England) this month, with locals in the Belgrave and some central areas reporting lots of duct and trenching work.
Little is known about the project in Leicester, although in 2017 Cityfibre built a limited Dark Fibre network in the city to help connect local businesses (here). The latest deployment will no doubt aim to extend outwards from that in order to reach more than 85% of local premises (homes and businesses).
As usual this forms part of the operator’s wider £4bn private investment plan (here), which aims to deploy “full fibre” broadband to cover around 1 million UK premises by the end of 2021, before potentially reaching their ambition of 8 million premises across 100+ cities and towns by the end of 2025 or later (c.30% of the UK).
In terms of competition, much of the local market is already covered by Virgin Media’s gigabit-capable broadband network, while Openreach has a few tiny FTTP patches and a modest deployment of slower hybrid fibre G.fast technology. As such Cityfibre could soon become the city’s 2nd largest provider of gigabit full fibre services to local homes. Credits to Jamie for spotting.